#melchahim

The newest caravan strode along the Razielim Road, Dumahim jealously guarding the wagons of ‘liberated’ slaves and bountiful vassals of blood. The pact snarled with cautious eyes and bristling arousal to the ever-clinging sting of earthy rot in the air. Ever since the First Clan’s humbling and even now, a century into the war against the rebellious humans that waned and waxed like a defiant tide against a fortress’ foundation, the Melchahim claimed the Razielim Stronghold for the time being.

The creak of wheels rolling on the paved road before a groan of wood and suddenly the weight of bodies finally collapsed one side of a wagon into a spill of screaming men and women. Immediately one of the overseers were on the mortals with violent rebuke as if their already starving bodies were purposeful to the new difficulty of this most inconvenient time.

At the front, the Alpha of this raiding pack glared as one of his lieutenants came with bowed head of submission. Goliath, one of Dumah’s personally-risen warriors. Unlike the other clans, the Thirdborn was more liberal of his risen creche. From the Grand Magi Vornah to the insufferable Fredrick de Rose...those were nothing to a proud general of the Dark Titan himself. Now, without that braggart to stand in his way, he will collect the septs one by one until the clan was under his rule.  

Like all of his direct inheritance, Goliath was massive. Even for a Dumahim, clad in the baroque armour of wraith-crafted steel and dark motif to the warrior caste that they are born for.  A tusked sneer crossed his tattooed face before snatching his lieutenant by his throat and dragged him up from his boots. The hot stink of recent feast huffed in the choking vampire’s face as he commanded,

“I want my meat back on progress. I want it all at the camp before dawn or I will personally feed your guts to the wargs!”

In that demand, Goliath flung his subordinate back and pointed a talon at the others, “Move now!” The lesser vampires bowed in the midst of their skittering movements for assistance. The fear of another vampire was delicious. Humans, certainly but there was a distinctive pleasure out of beating the fear from a fellow god and it brought an arrogant smile onto his face.

In the reveries, the pockets of upturned earth shifted. The whispers of the long-dead catching ears and suspenseful eyes until a woman screamed as she is roughly plucked by her handlers. “No! No! They’re coming, they come in hungry hate!” “Quiet, you insufferable wench.” The Dumahim hissed, snatching her by the throat. His claws biting into her flesh, already tempted to tear her screaming throat out and feed. It was Goliath’s commandment to keep every last of these blood-bags alive and something grabbed at his ankle. Through the creep of mist that appeared in the middle of their idle without immediate notice. “Wha-!?” Another hand - taloned and iron-grasped - took him into the softened earth. Nearly taking the woman with him, the vampire hissed and roared out. Convulsing and trying to drag himself to no result. “Help me fools!” He gurgled out as his torso yanked this way and that. Two of his brothers hurried off, grabbing his arms and helped. There was a sickly sound and the Dumahim was free!

Without his lower half.

The hateful scream of pain and attempt to remain conscious in the void-wrapped agony as he twisted and tried to reclaim his pulled innards. Skeletal hands erupted from the ground around them, clawing his hollering mouth, arms and organs. Tearing and dragging him back into the earth whence his corpse came.  

More erupted. The dead rose, the firefoxes of glowing sockets from the long-dead soldiers and slaves from past wars as their slowly reconstructed bodies shambled and groaned as puppets. Some holding rusty weapons of soldiery and instruments of farming, others used their gnawed nails and taloned finger-bones for the closest living and nonliving thing they sought. The Dumahim guards hissed, handling their own weapons and taloned fists, charged with savage rebuke. “Back to the grave with you!” One cried out, smashing a risen dead with a backhand that destroyed its upper half into a burst of bonedust and rot. The dust fell a moment, whirled and pulled itself into nostrils and mouth. The sudden wickedness caught the vampire by surprise enough to inhale sharply in shock.

Cough and spitting out globes of polluted saliva, the Dumahim sharply gagged to a sensation in his chest. A crawling spread that pierced into his veins, blackening as it went. “Gah!” The gurgling of pain rousing to eyes watching as his body jerked and spasming, fighting itself from strings unseen. Bones starting to snap in stubborn refusal, changing shape and when the screams became their highest with onlookers frozen in terror that a proud son of Dumah’s clan was nothing but a toy to this eldritch force. This reaver was torn into the material of a creature not of this realm.  His soul howling in its cadaver, fuel to the convulsing abomination of hardened flesh and shivering bones as it lunged in ghastly flight against former kin.

This army of the dead and converted fought at the protectors while their prize stared on, huddling tightly to one another in hopes that they will be safe from this.

In the chaos, seemingly more draugr rose. Their flesh, rotting and bloated under layers of stitches and fused evolution. Powerful and unnatural in their own way. A couple with many arms. Others with armour between layers and masks of blighted gold. Weapons in taloned hands. The rotten yellow of their truth hanging from waists and grim decor. The Children of the Sixth Clan emerge in the most opportunistic time, cleaving the weak and tearing with putrid hatred and spiteful energy.

Among them, more powerful beings walked. Their clan’s curse staled by powers beyond their lesser attribute, gifted by the Lands Beyond. Robes of grim regality and crested armour wrapping their shuddering frames, talons burning of abyssal power hurling violent bolts and screaming magicks at their enemy in their scrambling reformations.

There were too many. The fell power of Melchiah’s magi were honed and cunningly used in the right ways, even as the few lieutenants under Goliath’s routine claimed unlives with centuries’ honed powers and skills. Their maces and hammers crushing bones and bodies with air-ploughing force and their armoured form throwing by inhuman strength. Wargs barking, charging for vampires and closing their powerful salivating jaws for bloody kills but even bodies were weapons to the Sixth Clan.

Their ichor poisoning their killers with organ-melting potency and those not killed outright tore into bellies with bones pulled for weapons and fetishes. Warm blood steaming in the air and fed upon to heal.

All of this chaos. This inpudence. Utter craven disrespect of their betters!

Goliath sneered in nothing but distaste as he swatted four draugr in one decisive swing of his mace-wrapped fist and smashed one of these necromancer-called ghouls under his cloven boot. The pulverization of bones and warped meat crunching under heel before he lumbered for the closest summoner.

The woman, or this vague spectre of one, looked at her behind the porcelain mask under gilded armour and dark robes. He recognized her, even after all these centuries - he recognized Lady Samona. The High Witch of Melchiah’s dregs. Unnaturally tall for the lesser clan with limbs stretched and similar neck, she had a head-sized orb in the fold of one arm and armoured bird-like talons swaying with the calling of black magic.  “Goliath, it has been too long.” Her crowing voice purrs behind her mask’s perked red lips. “Old Samona, I am surprised you are not a pile of rot-slog by now. You are already a hag by the time your Master found you.” He taunted, his stride unstopping in full intent to crush her once and for all.

“And miss this?” She asks and in a sudden incantation that still sounds like mere gibberish to the Dumahim, her bolt flew straight for him. Moving with a crater-depression behind him, Goliath whirled in mid-air and came crashing for his enemy with a roar that shook the night. Samona did not move. She showed no fear of this brute and gave her reason why -

With a flick of her free hand, the bolt came right back with a wily intelligence and struck Goliath off course. The mist was twisting and collecting itself slowly at first before stretching into a great hand, solidifying into an abhorrent horror of groaning bodies consisting at this meaty palm’s fingers to swat him straight out of the air like a toy. 

Limbs grabbing muscle and plating with strength beguiling the rotten beings’ appearance as the solidifying arm was becoming more and more present. The mass of muscle and groaning faces to a crested shoulder of wailing bodies, clawing at the air and their own blood-weeping eyes.  It moved, slamming Goliath again and again into the ground before throwing him into a great Termogent tree with a thunderous crash. 

The dead around them pulled by the ghastly visage, breaking apart to meld and form the Mists’ true appearance. Another arm of similar horrors dragging and armoured legs curling on their digitigrade feet with wicked talons curling into the dirt. The horn-spined body leading to one ugly ‘head’ crested by bony ridges and barely a skull jutting from its fleshy prison. Black eyes glaring their glowing irises of murderous red and something of a smile on its slugging maw of teeth on its skeletal jaws. Meat hanging off its lips like a toad’s bloated thyroid.

Melchiah. Centuries since the loss of his precious stolen retreat, he had resurfaced.

This land, Sanctuary, as it is called by the people who dwell in this realm is a strange one. I was beheld by a cult of dead-worshippers, necromancers like - and unlike - myself. They spoke of many things to me. Of Angels. Of Daemons and the forces that drive the world. The Pillars of Nosgoth is not of their knowledge and...I suppose not to their concern. Yet, their corrupted sorceries does not escape me. Milady taught me about their elements. Matter, Time, Conflict, Dimensions, the Mind, Nature, Energies, Death, and the Balance that hold them all together. Or had.

I suspect with little doubt that the Pillar of Dimensions’ trickery has sent me here, pluck me from the wastes to this darkly vibrant land.

These Necromancers seem aware of my higher birth and while a sense of tranquil fear ooze from their cold mortality, they welcome me nonetheless. The whispers of some prophecy uttered from their lips, one of a falling star ripping through the heavens. Nosgoth had a few of those in my unlife, such things were coveted by the clans as treasures and sometimes tribute to our Emperor before his disappearance.